Tag: Cognitive Science

There has been a swathe of dubious reports recently about the supposed benefits of religion – how it makes you healthier, happier, less anti-social and ensures that you grow better tomatoes.  Now we are seeing the opposite claims beginning to emerge. A new study published in Trends in Cognitive Science finds that religion may have evolved as a by-product of non-religious, cognitive processes, dispelling a competing theory that religion served as an adaptation to help unrelated individuals cooperate.  The findings, published on Monday, suggests that people’s gut instinct for what is right and wrong operates independently of religious upbringing.

How Beliefs Resist Change

Once triggered for any reason, the feeling that something is right or real can be incredibly powerful—so powerful that when it goes head to head with logic or evidence the feeling wins. Our brains make up reasons to justify our feeling of knowing rather than following logic to its logical conclusion.